Hi,

Over the years, I've written quite a lot of Linux documentation, mostly in French. This document comes in simple text format, as a series of more or less laconic HOWTOs:

http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/Linux-HOWTOs/

For some time, I've been testing the Wordpress blog format, and I must admit I rather like it. Nothing fancy, just a vanilla account at wordpress.com, a standard theme, and here's what this looks like:

https://unixgarden.wordpress.com/

I'm at a point where I have to make a decision to adopt one of the two formats. Each format has its pros and cons. Simple text files are probably the most perennial format, but they're a bit limited, you can't really include images, feedback is limited to email, etc. As far as Wordpress is concerned, I've been badly bitten by a self-hosted WP that has been wiped out after I missed an update.

I'd be curious to have your thoughts on this subject.

Cheers,

Niki

I'd use AsciiDoc. Takes some time to get acquainted with, but very powerful. That's what we use for Slint's web pages, but it can do a lot more. It even has a blogpost weblog client with which you can publish AsciiDoc documents to WordPress blog hosts, and includes a syntax highlighter for VIM.

So, with a single AsciiDoc text as source file you can produce documentation in various formats. That should guarantee the sustainability of your investment in writing.

Markdown, again tools to convert it to whatever you want. Your files are close to markdown formatting already.

Well, all depends on the features you need. If it's just want to make simple html pages, markdown is a good buy. If you want to be able to provide more sophisticated or versatile output, AsciiDoc provides back ends for docbook45, html4, html5, xhtml11, slidy, wordpress, latex, and allows to write articles, man pages or books, as epub or pdf ebooks, all with the same syntax.

Both tools are written in perl

Use pandoc and you can convert Markdown to "reStructuredText, XHTML, HTML 5, LaTeX (including beamer slide shows), ConTeXt, RTF, DocBook XML, OpenDocument XML, ODT, Word docx, GNU Texinfo, MediaWiki markup, EPUB, Textile, groff man pages, Emacs Org-Mode, AsciiDoc, and Slidy, Slideous, DZSlides, or S5 HTML slide shows. It can also produce PDF output on systems where LaTeX is installed."

org-mode in emacs.

The reason I mentioned Wordpress and the specific blog format is the possibility to have user feedback at the botom of each article. I just wonder: where will my Wordpress site be in 5 or 10 years from now?

Yes Ruarí. But the difference is that asciidoc syntax is much more expressive or rich than that of markdown. Actually that's an argument for markdown in some respect, as there's a lot less to understand and remember than with asciidoc

I came across a similar difference between asciidoc syntax and dokuwuki syntax, trying to write a bidirectional converter in sed. Almost all dokuwiki markup can be converted from dokuwiki to asciidoc, but not the other way round.

Richer yes but looking at a few of his documents I don't think he'll need more than markdown provides.

Ahem. It's a blog I need. With the possibility to leave comments below each article. Any my question was about Wordpress' perennity.

Use a CMS of some sort. Wordpress, DokuWiki, whatever.

FTP'ing documents sounds great until you mess it up and wipe out the entire site.

Your concern was about formats, if I understood it correctly.

You can write your blog posts as Markdown ("simple text"), while using Wordpress to display them. You don't have to use their format and be concerned about being locked into it.

That way the original text of your blog can be converted to anything else you see fit if you move away from Wordpress in the future. Or you can post the markdown text as is, anywhere else you see fit, since it is clear and readable (in fact it looks very close to what you already post as text files).

P.S. Not sure how any of this relates to Slackware.

Not exactly. I'm comfortable with simple text, markdown, Wordpress, anything. My concern was about the perennity of a blog hosted by Wordpress.com.

Ok, that was not at all clear to me based on this comment from your original posting:

I any case, I think you are asking in the wrong forum. What does this have to do with Slackware again?

I have no answer to that but lftp or rsync are my friends, wherever my files be remotely stored. Dunno if wordpress.com provides rsync access though, but else maybe you could just lease some space on internet and run wordpress from there?

e.g. slint.fr is hosted at www.o2switch.fr 6€ / month with ssh + ftp access. You can install wordpress there: that's just a click away from the Cpanel.